The Arms of Death & The Breath of Life
by Celesteennui
Summary: The time has finally come to court Death on Earth. While Tony & the other Avengers face Thanos' siege, his daughter Phil, son Jamie, & the rest of the super bratpack have a mission of their own. The journey ahead is a formidable one & they'll need all the help they can get. Including what's offered from a mischief god, grudgingly seeking his absolution. 3rd in the Invictus series.


**Disclaimer:** Marvel/Disney own everything, I'm not making any money off of this, please don't sue.

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**Prologue: The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning—or—Phil Stark Is Debatably A Hero**

**July 8****th****, 2030-The Veil**

Phil Stark has fucked up a lot of things in her seventeen years of existence. To hear her dad tell it, that's just a trait from his side that she'll always kind of have to deal with. A gigantic IQ often comes with the gigantic capacity to overlook the small stuff. Dad has always said that the small stuff tends add up with a vengeance then snowball you off a cliff because you're so used to brushing it aside.

She gets what he's been telling her now, as she proverbially hangs by just her fingers off the edge.

"Phil, incoming!" Bucky shouts somewhere behind her. It's needless; she's already seen the animunculi coming at her and is flitting up and away even as he shouts. She fires a charge at it and at the friend that it brought, before swooping across the arena to give an assist to Anna.

Without a word, the younger girl holds out a hand and Phil takes it, carrying her upward. Anna's improvised weapon, an arm torn off one of the metal monsters, slices neatly through its brethren as Phil arcs them in a wide circle about the shrine. She drops her off amidst the biggest pile of freshly mangled monstrosities, watching, just for a second with sick fascination how Anna absorbs the parts before swooping over to Max.

Anna's big brother doesn't need much help, in fact, out of all of them, _he's_ probably the most on top of this mess. Still, even from inside the psionic bubble he's shielding himself and Hope beneath, he can't possibly handle everything. The bigger golems, the Behemoths, as Bucky calls them, can shatter Max's force field with their mass alone and there are three approaching him.

Phil dives in close to one, close enough that the massive gears that make up its exposed mechanical innards grind within dangerous proximity to her legs. She doesn't know exactly what these things are made of—DUME-E is still processing—but she'd hazard to guess that even the Vibranium and Adamantium components of her armor won't protect much from that sort of pressure.

Firing twice at the pulsing red gyro at the center, Phil watches it crack then explode. It's narrow, but she dodges the larger hunks of debris. Its fellows aren't so lucky and Phil hits the other two Behemoths in the confusion.

"Your aim's improving, Short-Stuff." Max's smirk is visible even through their com-link. "I mean, I could do better, but for _you_ that wasn't too bad."

"Fuck you." Two words that she never utters so much at anyone else _aside_ from Max Barton-Romanov. Also two words that never fall from her lips with so much affection for anyone except for Max.

It occurs, very briefly, to Phil, that she has never told Max how much she appreciates his snark. Dad is the only other person to ever keep pace with that smart mouth of hers, or he was, until Max came along.

There are about a thousand things she's never said to any of her nearest and dearest that she should have.

Dad knows how she feels, that much Phil is sure of, but does Mom? Her mother has put up with a lot of shit from Phil over the years, recent events not included, and at the very least, she's owed an apology. And thanks. And an "I love you, Mom" said every few seconds for the rest of her life.

Does Uncle Rhodey know how proud she is to be his goddaughter? How much she loves him? What about Uncle Steve? Uncle Bruce, Aunt Nat, and Uncle Clint? Have they ever even guessed how much she appreciates all that they've taught her? All that they've _tried_ to teach her?

The fact that she can't say twists her already knotted stomach.

Landing close to Bucky, she puts her back to his, helping him fend off a hoard of spidery animunculi that have popped up, seemingly from nowhere. His staff moves faster than she can track without DUM-E breaking it down for her and she really has to admire what her best friend can do.

The two of them are as machine-like as their opponents are, maybe even more so; they've practiced this fighting formation for _years_, even before she had a suit and he had a purpose. He's her partner, has been since the first day they had met when she'd scared the bejeezus out of him with loudness and levity.

Bucky has gotten in trouble on her account more times than she can count and yet he's never cut her out. His life would have been simpler if he had. Phil's would have had most of the color sucked out of it. That unspoken pact, that she will keep things interesting while he will always bring them back around to normal, has made the world worth living in and she has never taken the time to acknowledge it.

Something else that's always gone unsaid and taken for granted. Phil hates herself yet again and takes that frothing rage out on the mechanical spiders. Looping up in the air, twisting in a way that she definitely should not, she fires pulse after pulse at the little monsters. When the dust proverbially settles, Bucky stares up at her from the midst of a pile of still twitching metal limbs, eyebrows raised close to his hairline.

She can't say how she feels, not right now, maybe not ever, but where words fail, actions placate Phil's conscience.

Bucky, from the brief smile that lights his eyes, seems to understand. He always does, in the end.

That's what best friends do.

The warmth spreading out from her gut to the rest of her limbs doesn't last.

"It's opening!" The shout comes from across the arena, from Hope or Anna, Phil can't tell. She's too preoccupied with the fact that, whichever girl it is, they're right. The huge portal/gate/_thing_—the whole reason they've traveled to this fucking awful place—is starting to open.

She's doesn't know what in the hell on the other side of that gate, probably doesn't _want_ to know, given the hints that have been dropped along the way. What Phil does know is that whatever it is beyond that great, gilded threshold is bright and terrifying. And that it's exactly where Hope has to go.

On cue come the Behemoths, the spiders, and the man-sized animunculi with knives on their arms, pouring from nowhere and everywhere. Each clanking step resonates with a singular goal that Phil can feel down deep in her bones.

"Max, push forward!" Bucky shouts what she's thinking, what they all _have_ to be thinking.

Hope is around in the physical sense but Phil doesn't _feel_ the spiritual kind. There's almost no way they're going to get through this one. Phil knows it, in fact, she's sure.

She rushes to cover Max's charge, just as Anna and Bucky do. Other than avoiding her friends, Phil doesn't even bother with aiming. Wherever she fires something is hit, metal splinters beneath the heat and power of her pulse beams, exploding into white-hot bits. Over and over again, she does this as the waves of drones converge and bear down on their tiny band.

Anna is the first to fall away from the makeshift metahuman tank they're trying so desperately to be. Three of the mechanical men center on her, one slamming what appears to be a ball-hammer into her frail looking midsection. She's glad that Max's attention is wrapped up in pushing his hamster-ball of energy ahead. Phil doesn't see how he could keep going if he were looking at his sister right now. The way Anna's spine bends—an almost perfect "U"—is sickening to see. Even more painful is the way that suddenly tiny looking body flies backwards and collides with another animunculi.

There's a snarl that rips from Anna's throat, bloody, and _angry_. An inhuman noise, a cross between the static of radio waves and a dying cat. Her tiny fingers sink into the animunculi she hit and the gold of its frame seems to bleed into her own. The thing flails—like it holds the capacity to be frightened—dismembering the third troublemaker as Anna sucks it up. The would-be-killer now victim becomes a second set of arms that Anna uses to fend off the dozens of monsters now centering solely on her.

That static-cat yowl comes again with a gleeful smile, and, honestly, Phil is more scared _of_ her friend in that moment than _for_ her. Just for a moment, though. As Anna disappears in a sea of gold, those old familiar knots braid Phil's insides. Five walked into this stupid temple, five won't walk out. Phil knows this.

Bucky knows too, sees Anna go under, but he keeps on, just like Phil does. She feels his wince, the lurch of horror and despair in his gut because it's in her too.

She feels his fear when he falls as well.

A Behemoth breaks to the head of the mob, directly to Bucky's right, the flank he's guarding now. It's bigger than the others, a giant among giants, with armored plating covering the sensitive core Phil would normally exploit with her energy guns. In less than a second, Bucky has recognized that she can't help and makes the call.

Phil sees his choice when he very briefly catches her eye. His apology swims in the impeccable blue of his irises and, _fuck, _her chest throbs as if she took that blow to the chest instead of Anna. A plea clogs her throat; she swallows it down viciously.

They all knew what taking this on meant, right from the start. Bucky accepted the cost even before she did, with all of her stupid pride and Stark need to prove just how tall she stands.

Because Bucky is good. Because Bucky has honor. Because he's already the best man she knows even if he's only seventeen.

Or at least he's in the top five.

"Fuck 'em up, Buck!" she cheers instead as he launches himself at the thing, staff morphing into a spear. Phil doesn't watch him; she _can't_ if she wants to go on. Instead, she soars high and blasts everything she's got at the hoard, spinning like a top in the air until her power reserves are all but depleted.

"Phil, you're at fifteen percent, you have to stop," DUM-E's voice is gentle even as it cuts the power to the pulsars on her. Normally, Phil would resent that—_no one_ tells her what's too much and when to quit. She can't spell quit.

Normally.

Today is different, though. Today she and three of the most important people in her life walked across the threshold of existence. Today she isn't the girl parading in the spotlight. Today the Potts Common Sense is finally matching the Stark Intellect and getting her to do the right goddamn thing.

"Put what's left into the thrusters," she orders, diving back down, already calculating the Hail Mary she _will_ pull off.

"You're going to do something stupid, aren't you?" DUM-E's voice is so put-upon she wants to laugh. The AI is right in its suspicions.

"Very," she agrees. "Max, shields off and grab the Princess!"

Max doesn't question her, which, had she the time, Phil would revere as a miracle. They're both alike in clinical hardheadedness.

She realizes, vaguely, a scratching little epiphany buried under the more important things in her mind, that it's because he trusts her. Max trusts Phil with his life, with the fucking universe even. It's an irrefutable truth she sees as the shields disappear and he gathers Hope up in his big arms. He's even ready for the pick-up she never announced, jumping up to meet her metal-clad hands.

Phil zooms upward, away from the hoard, the portal in her sights. She's going to get Max and Hope there if it kills her.

As a second Colossus pops up—where do they even come from?!—and moves to block her, she accepts that it probably will.

Phil is not a hero. Dad is a hero, her uncles are, Aunt Nat, Fury, Hill, Thor, Bucky, and Max. Even the Pyms and the Richardses, much as she dislikes them. Those people are heroes. All Phil is, all she has ever been, is girl with an overinflated ego, privileged beyond what she deserves and obstinate beyond what is reasonable.

Phil built a suit to prove that she could, that she was her father's equal—no _better, _because she accomplished it so young and right under his nose—when Dad never denied her that recognition to begin with. She's never even had the tact to pretend that helping people with her technology was part of her plan. It's all been about her, her greatness, her legacy, right from the start.

_No_. That's not true. There was one thing. One Good Thing that had driven her for a long time, but she let that get buried beneath her ego so far that, even to herself, it takes convincing that it was ever there at all.

Because Phil is kind of a self-centered brat.

But, once again, today is different. Today, she's going to try and be less of a self-centered brat.

"Do whatever you have to, man." That's the only warning Max gets before she lets him go.

There's a split second, as her fingers uncurl from the back of his suit, where he looks up at her, green eyes wide in surprise and fear. As if he can't believe that she's going to just _drop_ him and Phil feels like such a traitor. Then his eyes widen as he sees what she's _really_ just done and _that_ hurts too.

New pain, aching, ringing, vibrating from the middle of her on out, fills Phil up as King Behemoth Number Two swats her, like some fucking housefly. There's a white-hot pulse of some raw, fucking amazing burst, which comes with the action. It's followed by the briefest satisfaction that, ha-ha, that stupid Colossus, is sailing across the room too. She doesn't see if it crumbles against the wall but she _hopes _it does, goddammit, because _she's_ already falling apart.

The descent seems to take forever. The Vibranium bits of Phil's armor soak in a lot of impact but the Adamantium, titanium, and other metals don't fare so well for her. Against the buzzing of her head she notes that bits are coming off. The white light of the Arc reactor, usually nestled just beneath her bellybutton, has gone out. The gleaming circle is cracked and DUM-E's voice is gone.

Hitting the ground, strangely—_and not in a good way_—doesn't hurt so much. Her breath was gone to begin with and there's something about lying on the floor, still, unmoving that's so wonderful to her right now, she can't even comprehend it.

Nothing's broken, but the ache, dizziness, and fear that she could vibrate right out of her skin might be worse. Phil doesn't know where it comes from, the strength she finds to push herself upright, her suit crumbling around her, but it's there. Somehow, it's there and she manages.

"_Stand up. You did this to yourself."_ Aunt Nat's voice rings from memory. That woman never did take it easy on her. On _anyone_ really. What little physical fortitude that Phil has comes from Aunt Nat's high expectations. Phil grins to herself; Aunt Nat is to thank for a lot of things.

She's on her knees in the middle of this ever-fucked up shrine, as her least favorite contraptions approach. Phil is defenseless unless she's forgetting something very important about her comfy raglan tee and torn jeans. She's not; there isn't so much as a knife tucked into her high-tops. She can't even see straight because her pony tail seems to have given up and there's a ton of sweaty, matted, plum hair plastered across her face.

In short, Phil is royally fucked and she knows it.

And then she feels a hand on her shoulder.

She whirls around, well, as much as someone as absolutely wrecked as Phil _can_ whirl, and her heart plummets.

"Jamie."

Her little brother shouldn't be there, that much she knows. He was supposed to be outside this place, safe.

Motherfucking Loki, he really couldn't be trusted with anything, could he?

She struggles up onto her feet, lurching forward and catching herself on Jamie's shoulders.

"Jamie—Jamie, you've gotta—get out." She's not upset that she can barely speak, mostly she's just surprised that she can at all. Phil shakes her brother, or tries to. She can't tell if it's working, what with everything still spinning. "Run. Run now."

"Why?"

She notices then, looking down into her baby brother's eyes. They're normally such a pretty, perfect blue, just like Mom's. She loves everything about them.

These eyes are not her brother's. They are hard, dense, and wrathful. A stranger's eyes inside Jamie's face.

No. No. This is worse. This _is_ Jamie and…

The animunculi have stopped moving.

"Jam…" She's not actually sure what it is she's going to say so her voice sputters off.

"You promised." His voice—she loves his voice like she loves everything about her brother and _shit_ that's something else she's never said—is distant. Disappointed.

The memory of her One Good Thing pounds at her chest from the inside out, threatening her sanity as much as her internal organs.

She killed her first man when she was ten-years-old. It wasn't a glorious moment; in fact, it can still make her sick to dwell too long on it. There was no bloodthirsty rage in her veins when she hacked her father's weapons cabinet, no pride. For Phil, there was only _fear_ and not so much that she was going to die. She hadn't cared about herself. What had made Phil pull the trigger on Shockwave was Jamie; because if she didn't then she was gone. And if Phil was gone on top of Claire, Mom, and Dad, _Jamie _was alone.

Jamie has always been her One Good Thing—The _Best_ Thing—and she has all but forgotten that these last few years. Since MIT, the accolades, and all the other attention her brilliance has garnered.

_You, little mortal, will never understand what your shadow is like. Only two things may grow in that sort of cold: hate and vengeance. Neither are particularly beauteous once they have bloomed._

Loki's words echo up from under her ribcage and pulse through all of her extremities. She finally understands the warning.

While Phil was busy "protecting" Jamie from the monsters outside, who in the hell was protecting him from her?

That realization hurts more than anything she has ever felt before. More than breaking her arm when she was twelve. More than Mom's "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" look or Dad's silence. More even than the blade Jamie rams through her chest.

Every inch of him is glowing blue now as he raises her, impaled, into the air. Phil doesn't jerk or fight the severing of her muscles, the puncturing of lung tissue; she accepts the blinding burst of agony. She deserves it.

"_Phil_!" Bucky's scream would break her heart if it wasn't already done. She sees him, again, falling somehow goes in slow motion, as Jamie throws her off the end of his weapon. Bucky has defeated his Colossus, stands on its toppled body like the champion he is. Even from so far away the horror and disbelief on her best friend's face are clear. She will never forget sight of all that misery, mostly because Phil already knows there will be no time for her to forget.

Dad, Aunt Nat, and the uncles have talked about the man she was named for a few times. It's painful for them, but they never brushed her queries aside. Phil Coulson was another hero like she can never be. It's funny, she thinks, how she gets to die almost exactly as he did, though.

She sees him now, an older man with close-cropped hair, an immaculate suit, and warm, kind eyes. She doesn't deserve the smile he gives her, the sympathy.

The first Phil, Good Phil, stands close to Loki, who's behind Jamie. Her brother's turning to grin at the god who stares on with those ever-impassive eyes of his. Phil wants to blame him, desperately wants to toss part of the mess at his feet. She can't though. Loki is _Loki_, he's born for mayhem, and he can't be blamed for that.

She still thinks he's a royal fucking prick, though.

All of this ruin can't even be pinned on Thanos and the skeletal avatar he serves. This bridge was built and burned by Phil. _Just_ by Phil.

There's something bright and dark all at once nipping at the edges of her mind. Death. Real Death, not the mad psychopomp she's become too familiar with these last few weeks. This is a place, a state of being, and Phil can't fight it.

Still, even as she stops struggling for what could be the first time in her entire life, Phil has to try just one thing. Not for herself.

One last good thing.

Blood and saliva mix together against her tongue then dribble down her chin as she wills her voice to work. Just a little air from her battered lungs, so quickly filling up with fluid, that's all she needs.

"Jam—Jam…" A red, sticky, spit bubble pops on her lips. The voice creeping out doesn't sound like her at all, though the rattling in her chest and throat assure Phil that it is indeed hers.

Jamie turns from Loki, annoyance for her interruption of his exchange clear on every line of his face. Their eyes meet and Phil thinks of Mom and all of the things she never said and will never get to say to her again. She thinks of Dad, how much she wishes he was here, because maybe he was right, maybe this is too much for her right now.

She's crying. Shit. She's crying. Phil Stark is crying, dying, and, fuck it, she can admit it, she _really_ wants her daddy.

"I love you, Jamie."

She wants to say "more than anything in the world" but that's not going to happen. There is no more air, no more pulse. Her thoughts cease and the world melts away, with even the glow of Jamie's eyes flickering out.


End file.
